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I recall a book that mentions this counting system being Cumbric and specifically being still in use by modern shepherds. The writer was from Cumbria so that w

I recall a book that mentions this counting system being Cumbric and specifically being still in use by modern shepherds. The writer was from Cumbria so that would gel with it being a generic Brythonic thing. The Welsh and Scottish numbers are obviously cognate. Very roughly, the brythonic languages are those languages that were spoken in Britain. The term Britain gets a bit complicated. There were two britains - the greater (larger) and the lessor (smaller). The greater one is now part of the UK and the lessor is Brittany in France. Great Britain is basically the bigger Britain! The term was taken on by King James 1 (England) 6 (Scotland) to describe the unity of Scotland and England. It looks like we can thank the ancient greeks for the name anyway - a bloke called Pytheas circumnavigated these shores and describes the "Pretannike". That is probably a greekism for whatever the locals called themselves back in the day - bretanns. Before the Romans rocked up in 55 and 54BC and finally in 43AD, Brythonic languages were the norm in these isles and there were loads of them. I doubt there was any sort of "purity" or that the blasted things could even be pinned down in a modern formal sense. Bear in mind that 1500ish years later Shakespear (literally: shakes his spear) managed at least 20 odd spellings for his own name. Anyway, the Romans buggered off and things got quite complicated from around 350AD onwards in these parts.

thaumasiotes 4y ago
> There were two britains - the greater (larger) and the lessor (smaller). The greater one is now part of the UK and the lessor is Brittany in France. Great Britain is basically the bigger Britain! That is the ordinary meaning of "great", yes. The terminology is conventional; you can see the same thing in the division between "Great Russia" (today, "Russia"), "White Russia" (today, "White Russia"), and "Little Russia" (today, "Ukraine"). A lot of terminology that feels distinctive now turns out not to be when you look into it. I always felt the the title "Czar of all the Russias" was cooler than the titles taken by other European monarchs. But I learned that in fact, "regina omnium Britanniarum", literally "queen of all the Britains" was a title of Elizabeth II. I tend to assume the title goes back further than that. Elizabeth II was certainly not the queen of Brittany. On the other hand, wikipedia does tell us that the classical Greek astronomer Ptolemy used "little Britain" to refer to Ireland, not Brittany, and she was the queen of Ireland. This would make "the Britains" synonymous with "the British Isles". > It looks like we can thank the ancient greeks for the name anyway - a bloke called Pytheas circumnavigated these shores and describes the "Pretannike". That is probably a greekism for whatever the locals called themselves back in the day - bretanns. Pytheas gives that name to the island, not the people. He would have distinguished between /b/ and /p/ - that is the difference between the ancient Greek letters B and Π - so there is no reason to believe the locals used a /b/. The Welsh form, Prydain, still uses P today. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Prydain https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Prydain

thaumasiotes 4y ago

> There were two britains - the greater (larger) and the lessor (smaller). The greater one is now part of the UK and the lessor is Brittany in France. Great Britain is basically the bigger Britain! That is the ordinary meaning of "great", yes. The terminology is conventional; you can see the same thing in the division between "Great Russia" (today, "Russia"), "White Russia" (today, "White Russia"), and "Little Russia" (today, "Ukraine"). A lot of terminology that feels distinctive now turns out not to be when you look into it. I always felt the the title "Czar of all the Russias" was cooler than the titles taken by other European monarchs. But I learned that in fact, "regina omnium Britanniarum", literally "queen of all the Britains" was a title of Elizabeth II. I tend to assume the title goes back further than that. Elizabeth II was certainly not the queen of Brittany. On the other hand, wikipedia does tell us that the classical Greek astronomer Ptolemy used "little Britain" to refer to Ireland, not Brittany, and she was the queen of Ireland. This would make "the Britains" synonymous with "the British Isles". > It looks like we can thank the ancient greeks for the name anyway - a bloke called Pytheas circumnavigated these shores and describes the "Pretannike". That is probably a greekism for whatever the locals called themselves back in the day - bretanns. Pytheas gives that name to the island, not the people. He would have distinguished between /b/ and /p/ - that is the difference between the ancient Greek letters B and Π - so there is no reason to believe the locals used a /b/. The Welsh form, Prydain, still uses P today. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Prydain https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Prydain